No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

The second amendment is a pretty well articulated negative right in the same manner as the first or the fourth in the classical liberal school of thought. These are natural rights that individuals have and the bill of rights merely states that these are outside of the government’s sphere. The technology being used whether it be voicing your opinion on the internet, your house being secure from searches with thermal cameras without a warrant, or using modern firearms doesn’t alter the right or the government’s relationship to it.

The fourteenth amendment, specifically the due process clause at issue here, says that if the government exercises its power to deprive you of life, liberty, or property it must provide due process. In this case the government was not exercising such a power. It does not say that the government must provide clean water, in which case our understanding of what “clean” means would mirror the technological indifference of the aforementioned rights. Due process clause is just a really bad vehicle for this type of grievance.

That makes no sense. The 14th not covering clean water at the time it was written is not because they didn't have germ theory.

The comparison to the 2nd also makes no sense. First, machine guns come up in arguments about reducing the scope of the 2nd whereas the argument here is about expanding the scope of the 14th.

Second, the 2nd is a lot clearer than the 14th. Pretty much every concrete right we get out of the 14th is either something that is inferred from it being generally recognized as an unstated right by the time the 14th was passed or has been found by arguing that it is implicit in the other more explicit rights (e.g., right to privacy as something you have to have to make some of the more explicit rights meaningful).

>"the Second Amendment predates machine guns"

That statement is false. Repeating firearms like the Puckle gun predate the bill of rights by ~75 years.

More importantly, the Founders were hardly unfamiliar with privately owned military firepower. The Constitution expressly authorized Congress to grant letters of marque, and the government commissioned privateers to attack enemy shipping using their cannon-armed privately-owned warships.

If you want to change an amendment do it the correct way, repeal it.

Germ theory really started around 1860 and the 14th amendment was 1868. Seems they both coexisted.

The 14th does not predate germ theory.

The 2nd does not predate machine guns.

The 1st does predate the internet.

And none of these matter because the Constitution deals in principles not details.

"This guy was killed with a laser but the law against murder was written after clubs but predates lasers, so it doesn't apply and you can't call this a murder."

The ruling sounds correct to me but not because of anything to do with the date that any part of the constitution or ammendment was written.

So do you or do you not believe the First Amendment protects speech on this website? Or does it only protect quill pens and moveable type printing presses?

Machine guns are banned at the federal level, though, and it's been consistently upheld by the courts. I'm not sure I follow the argument anyway; the US constitution consists of negative rights (e.g. freedom to do something) rather than positive rights (e.g. entitlements)

sure, but that's not the 14th amendment. Maybe the guarantee clause. It MIGHT touch the 14th amendment via incorporation. That's not what the attorneys argued.

from an external POV it looks a lot like:

- the US law making process is fundamental and deeply broken to a point of it feels comparable to the Weimar Republic (the Germany between WW1 and Hitler taking over, around it's end it was pretty much dysfunctional when it comes to passing laws)

- instead things which should be law changes, and should be pursued bipartisan, are squeezed into other things. Like the budged bill, wider interpretations(1) of the existing law etc.

- or bundled into absurdly large bills covering docents of things which should not be one bill (which is very un-democratic and likely harmful for the US citizens. It allows corrupt politicians to forces less corrupt ones to vote for bad laws, because they are bundled with very essential needed changes, it also has shown to pose a very realistic risk of "sneaking" in something bad etc.)

- other cases often get stuck or even for topics which should be bipartisan held hostage to push some other goals

- with the current president this seems to have gotten even worse as he and the people close to him have attacked changes otherwise pursued by a wider bipartisan support. So even iff you can onboard both sides it might not mean enough in this legislation. But while I'm pretty sure I have seen such cases I can't remember details, so take with a grain of salt.

- to add in on top of all of that: Consumer and environmental protection in the US has always been a bit weak, a bit too slow, and often lacking precautionary approaches (most thing being reactive to enough people suffering harm, even if it was clear for a long time that idk. a product isn't safe or similar). And in some aspects this has been further crippled by the current administration, but idk. if such aspects apply here. That means even iff the current state is caused by a crime, it likely will take years to make stop the criminal from committing it. If it's seen as a breach of constitution things likely would move faster, and corrupt local governments have a much harder time undermining it.

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(^1): Which isn't always bad, some degree of "vagueness" to handle the complexity of constant changing IRL is often desirable (as a dump example you also would make a law to forbid killing, instead of a law which explicitly lists and forbids every imaginable way you might kill someone). But what I mean goes far beyond that. In general some recognition of "basic human right" on a constitutional level should be something any citizen should ask their country to have. And I mean that independent of the international human rights court and the specific interpretation of human rights common with it. Not recognizing it is one thing, but insistently not recognizing any form of human rights is another, IMHO pretty evil, thing.

I thought the government's use of deception was limited to only circumstances necessary to protect people from harm, not to inflict harm upon them.

> If there was documented, provable harm done to the residents from the lead poisoning (not saying there isn’t, I just don’t know), they could surely win a civil case claiming negligence by the city and/or water treatment facilities/etc

I would never understand this system. So to get repatriation on damage done a citizen has to mount an entire legal initiative. Even if the guilt is already proved. It just feels like a system where departments of government will only sue to fill their own budget next year.

> You cannot legally demand what physically is not there.

But you can demand what is provided to you by public utility isn't knowingly and secretly poisoned with a neurotoxin.

US has a lot of underground water, that is starting to run a bit low atm, but it's not like they are on desert world. The reason there is no political will to ensure access to water in US, is because its good way to make money, and any legal guarantees as to quality/safety of the water would unreasonably lower investors' return

The writers of the US constitution were well aware of how to enumerate positive rights, as they were common in the state constitutions, as well in many European countries' declarations of rights in restraint of monarchs. Many of them resisted this, especially James Madison, who called them mere parchment barriers and ineffective, even counterproductive. Madison's side mostly held sway, where the US constitution focused on the structure of government. The anti-federalists and other factions were the ones who pushed for enumerated positive rights, and they won only some concessions, like the Bill of Rights, which Madison and others worked to limit, such as phrasing some of them in negative terms.

You can disagree with Madison, but he certainly wasn't ignorant about these questions. He just felt positive rights were better secured through dynamic legislative processes within a stable and responsive democratic framework. The hard part is trying to maintain a responsive democracy. Without that positive rights are empty promises, anyhow, as they often are in these newer constitutions. One of the problems with making promises you can't keep is it delegitimizes government, which furthers the normalization of corruption and unlawfulness.

Our Constitution can evolve. This whole case is about an amendment to the Constitution! We don't evolve it by reinterpreting the text but by amending the text.

Oh, I think GOP is nicely evolving US constitution with a little help from supreme court

> pursuing tort claims

Which certainly won't get thrown out over qualified immunity.

(And if they win a case against the city, it's coming out of their own pockets!)

> Allowing judges to interpret the “spirit of the law” more widely would create a different set of absurdities, I think.

Yeah, kinda genuinely terrifying to think about that timeline. That's how you get George Orwell's worst nightmares come true.

It's one of those things people only want when it benefits their ideas in the moment.

this happens all the time anyhow. "originalism" is ironically a pretty new strain of thought

And then entities litigate to have those laws overturned on highly abstract theoretical grounds, alleging that they violate the framers' intent in drafting the Constitution, or exceed enumerated powers or whatever.

What ordinary law requires officials to issue truthful statements? We're living in the era of unrestrained executive power.

Never once tried to argue that it should be included in the Constitution. I suppose one of those "other laws" will cover when the government deliberately gives people lead poisoning? I wonder why they didn't go with that one...

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"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Still sounds like negative framing to me. And when those implicit non-declared rights are judged legally, they are still judged in a negative rights lens, no?

The right to legal counsel and jury are protections are still defensive in framing, though I concede your point. Access to education I would also concede is partially positive though you see it is about not denying. I would also say the more recent positive-sounding rights declarations/rulings are not always on super solid grounds, but this is admittedly circular.

I stand by my claim of "built on".

I might be mistaken, but when an international treaty is ratified, it has the same weight as a constitutional amendment. I’m sure the US ratified something around those lines.

I don’t think that many Americans would keep their jobs if it were not for the threat of abject poverty looming over their heads.

> It just establishes that there are rights not listed in the Constitution. It provides no help whatsoever in determine what those rights are.

The opinion is asserting a government intentionally allowing lead poisoning does "not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right". That's an assertion that no such right exists.

> One is looking to see if the alleged right is deeply rooted in history and tradition and implicit in the idea of ordered liberty.

Hilariously, the "deeply rooted in history and tradition" test is, itself, not rooted in history and tradition. It was established in 2022!

I disagree. The Preamble explicitly states that the Constitution is for these six things. "in Order to" makes it clear what the ends of the document are, and what they’re meant to serve.

That it doesn’t confer unlimited power is orthodox constitutional law. But the Preamble explicitly states the constitutional purposes that should guide the interpretation and exercise of the powers enumerated. And it doesn’t follow that the purposes it states are legally meaningless. The’re part of the constitutional text and inform how the powers actually conferred by the Constitution are construed. As Story commented:

“One of the best established rules of interpretation, one, which common sense and reason forbid us to overlook, is, that when the object of a power is clearly defined by its terms, or avowed in the context, it ought to be construed, so as to obtain the object, and not to defeat it. The circumstance, that so construed the power may be abused, is no answer. All powers may be abused; but are they then to be abridged by those, who are to administer them, or denied to have any operation? If the people frame a constitution, the rulers are to obey it. Neither rulers, nor any other functionaries, much less any private persons, have a right to cripple it, because it is according to their own views inconvenient, or dangerous, unwise or impolitic, of narrow limits, or of wide influence.”

The Preamble isn't vague about what it's doing, though. It's quite clear. It tells us who is establishing the Constitution and expressly states the purposes for which they are establishing it.

Saying that those stated purposes should inform constitutional interpretation isn't a particularly novel idea. Pretending the ratified language at the beginning of the Constitution doesn't matter because taking it seriously might be inconvenient isn't a serious position either.

The possibility that judges can abuse constitutional interpretation is an argument for doing it carefully, not selectively. Or, as Joseph Story put it: "The circumstance, that so construed the power may be abused, is no answer. All powers may be abused."

Can’t say that I follow. What does a king have to do with forming a more perfect Union, establishing Justice, insuring domestic Tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general Welfare, and securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity?

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That would actually make sense. It’s the police’s job to “serve and protect” and, if there was a likelihood a person would commit a crime and, knowing that, the police refused to act to prevent harm to the population, the police force should be held accountable for that.

Perhaps the dosage is still too low.

Not from US and not a lawyer, but for me it makes sense for 'speech' to include writing, signs, etc... But not money. I think it should only include what every person has same of as every other person. We all can communicate, write, display signs,.... But not everyone can donate millions/billions

> it'll be on the ballot this fall in Montana

There are reasons to be optimistic.

> how can that same right be denied to a group who have decided to speak together?

Corporations are not people nor behave like individuals. Money is not speech.

> “speech” in this context has always been interpreted to mean any act by which a message is conveyed to other people

Like a bullet? That explains the high murder rate in the USA. Your argument makes no sense and only works if one does not think too much about it.

> has always been interpreted

Saying that it has always been like that does not make it so. Because it was not.

It has always been agreed by everybody that corporations do not have a right to free speech only individual citizens have it.